Walnut Hollow & Quietfire Blog Hop - Last Day!

Welcome to the final day of the Walnut Hollow & Quietfire 2014 Blog Hop!  We’re pleased you’re joining us and hope you've found lots of creative inspiration for combining Quietfire stamps on the beautiful Walnut Hollow wood products. 
 

 I love autumn. I'm not a lover of hot weather.  Thanksgiving used to be such an event in our family.  While the turkey was cooking, my mother took me out for walks and we'd collect leaves which inevitably ended up on the table and then later pressed in books. Visits to my grandparents when I was young found me reading a book or building a model airplane - or climbing the maple tree in their back yard. 

As soon as this blog hop was conceived, I had an idea. When you have something in your mind for so long (Chris and Sara from Walnut Hollow and I discussed the hop at the CHA conference in January!), I'm not sure the reality can ever live up to the expectation.  But, no matter what, it was fun getting to the final product.


I'm the daughter of a woodworker/furniture refinisher (amongst other things), so when my Walnut Hollow treasures arrived, I was in sniffing heaven!  Who doesn't love the smell of wood? I chose the Walnut Hollow Rustic Wood Ledge for this project and rather than use it as a ledge, I (as I think most of us would) flipped it over to use as a container! 

Along the side of the ledge, I chose to create the year-long story of a maple tree as it goes from bare branches in the winter, to maple syrup time and fresh buds, to lush summer coolness and on to the glorious colours of autumn.

Last week I introduced a new cutting file to help make this project easier:

maple tree - four seasons

Because of my passion for wood in its bare state, I didn't paint or stain the beautiful pine surface. (lol, no, it's not maple, but that's okay!)

Here is the supply list:
Walnut Hollow: Rustic Wood Ledge
Quietfire Design: Being Thankful, Give Thanks

Silhouette Online Store: maple tree - four seasons and leaf spray card
Silhouette: Cameo
Silhouette: Vellum (for snowflakes)
Tsukineko: VersaMagic Dew Drops Jumbo Java, Spanish Olive, Pumpkin Spice
Zva Creative: Long Flourish Pearls
Cardstock: American Crafts Smooth and Recollections
Bo Bunny: Autumn Song
Kaisercraft: Treasures Metal Corners Brass
copper book corners
candles, rocks
Adhesives:
Glue Dots: micro and mini 
Pop Dots
Zip Dry
Tombow Dot Pattern Stamp Runner

Instructions:

1. Cut 8 trees from brown cardstock.  If your cardstock is fairly thin, cut 16 trees and double up each tree with adhesive so you have eight sturdier trees in total. Cut leaves in many colours, snowflakes from vellum, and swings, birdies and buckets from red cardstock.  (You could use Elizabeth Craft's All Season Tree die set if you don't own an electronic cutting machine.)
2. While they lay flat, assemble the trees with leaves, snowflakes and other elements as shown in the photographs. Decorate both sides of the trees as back of the tree tops will show across the table!
3. Stamp the sentiments on off-white cardstock and trim. Blend Jumbo Java around the edges of the cards to antique them.  Place book corners on each corner of each card and crimp in place.
4. Attach the brass corners to edges of ledge.
5. Apply the pearl flourish to the side of the ledge so winter blows into spring. Attach trees and sentiment panels to ledge with Pop Dots as shown.

6. On the Silhouette Cameo, ungroup the leaf spray card elements and cut only the leaves from a sheet of patterned paper.  Use Glue Dots to attach leaves to the ends of the ledge - because we just can't leave it naked!

7. Add some scented candles and rocks to the inside - or fill it with pressed leaves and you'll be all set for the sharing part of Thanksgiving!

Speaking of thanks....
Many thanks to Chris Wallace and Sara Shirman at Walnut Hollow and Judi Kauffman for playing with us, and to Walnut Hollow for providing the Quietfire Design team with such wonderful products.  You will see more projects over the next few months featuring other Walnut Hollow items.

And thanks, as always, to my amazing Design Team!  You inspire me to be better - and different - every day!

And now............

To be eligible for our grand prize, your work is simple:  Please leave a comment on each of our blog posts, nine here on the Quietfire Creations blog and five on the Walnut Hollow blog hop posts here: http://walnuthollowcrafts.wordpress.com/   So that will be 14 comments in total on two different blogs from September 29, 2014 to October 3, 2014!  The winner must be a resident of North America.  

You can go back and comment at any time on any of the blog posts to be eligible, but you should finish by midnight Sunday October 5th PST.

We will draw the prize on Monday October 6^th, 2014 and the winner will be announced shortly after in a separate blog post. We look forward to seeing your comments!  Tell your friends!

Good Luck!

and Happy Thanksgiving to all the Canadians!

List of Blog Hop Posts with links:
Wanda
Teresa
Chris
Sherry
Kathy Jo
Sara
Holly
Yogi
Chris
Judi
Yvonne
Robyn
Suzanne (that's here!)
Chris